A management system for managing the operation states of industrial vehicles such as a forklift etc. is disclosed by for example Patent Document 1 below etc. An important portion of the management system disclosed in Patent Document 1 is shown in FIG. 5. In FIG. 5, a vehicle 500 such as a forklift etc. includes a CPU 507, and the CPU 507 detects the operation state of the vehicle 500 at prescribed time intervals on the basis of output from a vehicle velocity sensor 501, a load sensor 502 and a load manipulation detection sensor 503.
Output from the vehicle velocity sensor 501, the load sensor 502 and the load manipulation detection sensor 503 are respectively converted by a vehicle-velocity detection interface 504, a load detection interface 505 and a load manipulation detection interface 506 into signals that the CPU 507 can recognize. Also, the CPU 507 executes a program stored in a ROM 508.
A RAM 509 is used as a work area for the CPU 507. A realtime clock IC 510 outputs information representing the time. A data communication module 511 transmits the result of detection conducted by the CPU 507 (i.e., data representing the operation state of the vehicle 500) to a management system 512. Communications between the data communication module 511 and the management system 512 may be wireless or wired.
Receiving data representing the operation state transmitted from the data communication module 511 of the vehicle 500, the management system 512 analyzes the data, determines the operation state (running with loads, running without loads, standing with loads and standing without loads) of the vehicle 500 for each time unit, generates data for recognizing, studying and managing the operation state of the vehicle 500 on the basis of the determination result, and displays the data in a display device (not shown).
Also, Patent Document 2 and other documents describe a guidance system that reports to a server apparatus etc. the usage state of a battery charger of an electric automobile that runs by using a battery, and provides the driver of the electric automobile with guidance about an available battery charger. An important portion of this system is shown in FIG. 6. As shown in FIG. 6, a server apparatus 602 of the guidance system includes a control device 603 and a communication device 604.
The control device 603 includes an automobile information collection unit 611, a charging station information collection unit 612, a running distance calculation unit 613, a charging station extraction unit 614, a charging station arrival time calculation unit 615, a corrected operation state information generation unit 616 and a transmission unit 617.
The automobile information collection unit 611 receives running information including the position information of an electric automobile 630a and the state of the battery via abase station 621, a communication network 620 and a communication device 604. The charging station information collection unit 612 receives operation information representing the operation state from respective charging stations 622a, 622b and 622c via the communication network 620 and the communication device 604. This operation information includes, among others, information related to whether or not each of the charging stations 622a through 622c is open, information related to vacancy of charging spaces of charging posts 623, and charging information of an electric automobile 630c that is being charged such as charging completion expected time information.
The running distance calculation unit 613 calculates a remaining runnable distance on the basis of the velocity information and the temporal change of the battery information of the electric automobile 630a. The charging station extraction unit 614 extracts one of the charging stations 622a through 622c that are distributed over the scope of the remaining runnable distance, on the basis of the position information of the electric automobile 630a. 
The charging station arrival time calculation unit 615 generates apiece of arrival time information, which is the time at which the electric automobile 630a will arrive at the charging stations 622a through 622c for each of the charging stations 622. The corrected operation state information generation unit 616 generates corrected operation state information, which is the operation state at a time later by a prescribed period of time, on the basis of the operation information of the charging stations 622a through 622c. 
The transmission unit 617 reports the arrival time information and the corrected operation state information of the arrival time for each of the charging stations 622a through 622c to the driver of the electric automobile 630a via the communication network 620 and the base station 621, and provides the driver with guidance of the nearest available charging station.